


In Articulo Mortis

by HeartOfStars



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depressed Tony Stark, Depression, F/M, Gen, Mentioned Peter Parker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tissue Warning, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22655791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfStars/pseuds/HeartOfStars
Summary: In Articulo Mortis: "on the point of death, being sick beyond hope." A short one-shot about Tony's PTSD immediately post-Infinity War, with appearances by Pepper and Rhodey. Warning for references to depression, suicidal thoughts, and mention of suicide attempts.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	In Articulo Mortis

**Author's Note:**

> Read the above warnings: this is definitely the most depressing thing I've ever written. If you've had issues with any of that, read at your own risk.

It’s bad for the first few months. He barely sleeps. He doesn’t know how he even lives, wishing he could die and getting around three hours of sleep each night. Pepper gets him anxiety meds, depression meds. Rhodey comes over every afternoon, or as often as he can. He takes five milligrams of melatonin each night. None of it works, because every time he closes his eyes, Peter dies again. Peter dies over and over and over in his arms, “I’m sorry” echoes in his head, dust flies up in his face. Over and over and over. 

Or if it’s not that, he watches the others die again. 

He gets half his mask ripped off again. 

He gets stabbed again, stabbed with his own knife again. 

He hears the words again:  _ “It was the only way.” _

_ Bullshit,  _ he spits back, after he’s woken up. After he’s managed to stop sobbing.

He falls from the wormhole again. 

He sees all the Avengers dead again--dead in New York. Dead in Sokovia. 

He sees all the ones that actually died, whether he saw them die or not. 

And, punctuating the awful images, piercing through all of it: “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark.”

Over and over and over again. 

That’s the first few months. Nightmares, and Pepper keeping every weapon in the house away from him, and a security team around the house in case he tries to kill himself. Apparently he did, twice, in the first week. Screaming and picking up everything he’s ever made to try to get to his heart, wishing he hadn’t gotten the shrapnel removed, as Pepper sobs and Happy sobs and Rhodey repeats mindless, worthless words over until he calms down. But he doesn’t remember it. 

When it’s been four months, the nightmares start to disappear. Bit by bit, he gets more sleep, but he knows why: he’s started to accept what happened. 

That terrifies him more than any of the nightmares. 

He never wants to accept it. Thanos didn’t win. The Avengers won. Everyone lived. The kid didn’t die sobbing and choking on dust in his arms.

(At some point, he stopped being “Peter” and became “the kid” instead. Not calling him by his name somehow makes things easier, and he hates it.)

A few weeks later, things are  so much worse he’s accepted it and he knows what happened and he can’t forget it even better, and he and Pepper set up a wedding. It’s a small ceremony, so much smaller and so much sadder than he ever dreamed it would be, and half the guests at the top of the list are too dead to show. But he’s got Rhodey to be his best man, just like he always wanted, and Pepper wears the blue dress she wore ten years ago when they danced for the first time, so it’s as good as it’s going to be. 

They don’t move forward, then, not yet. But eventually she convinces him to stop worrying and stop wearing a condom  _ just in case,  _ and he doesn’t worry. Because he’s with her. 

Then she goes to the doctor.  _ Just the annual check-up  _ she says. 

But there’s something she’s not telling him. Not just her. There’s something Rhodey and Happy and everyone else isn’t telling him. And he’s too numb, and too temporarily satisfied--not happy, just sort of satisfied--to figure out. 

But he knows two weeks later. He knows, because no matter what kind of clothing Pepper wears he’s known her for a million years, and he can tell she’s pregnant. 

Pregnant. With their kid. With his kid. 

_ The kid.  _

And just like that, everything comes back. Because he had a kid. They had a kid. He had a kid and he promised he was going to keep him safe and he did everything in his power to keep him safe and he couldn’t keep him safe and  _ I don’t want to go I don’t want to go  _ and he--

Tony doesn’t realize he’s having another panic attack until he’s on the floor with his head between his knees and Pepper is saying his name, over and over again, and then she’s calling Rhodey. 

_ Get up!  _ a voice says in his brain but he can’t, he can’t do anything but gasp raggedly and try to stay where he is and not hunt down his suits.  _ Get up, do something, don’t just sit here! You’re not like this!  _

But he is. He’s a piece of shit. 

There are so many things he’s done, so many things and people he’s guilty of, responsible for...he sold weapons to terrorists. He destroyed livelihoods. He brought an army to New York. He built Ultron and killed millions of people, he almost murdered an innocent man in cold blood, he broke up the Avengers, he almost got the kid killed, he lost--he lost hundreds of people--

“Tony!” 

Rhodey’s talking to him. Tony focuses. 

“Uh...yeah,” Tony says, sitting back on his legs. 

Rhodey heaves a sigh of relief. “There you go, Tony. All right. I was...you had me worried for a minute.” 

Tony hears Pepper choking back a sob. In the distance, she leaves the room. 

Rhodey just crouches there for a few moments, staring at him. Eyes searching his. Concerned, pitying--it disgusts him. Everyone pities him now, everyone’s walking on eggshells around him and  _ he hates it.  _

“Just stop it,” he snaps. “Rhodey, for the love of Christ, STOP already!” 

Rhodey frowns. “Stop what?”

“You know what,” Tony snarls. Rhodey seems legitimately taken aback, but he doesn’t care. “ _ All of it.  _ The pitying stares, the concern, the tiptoeing around me,  _ keeping secrets  _ from me--”

Rhodey actually flinches. 

Yeah, he knew, all right. 

“I know she told you,” he goes on, “I know she told everyone but me, I’m not a GODDAMN idiot!”

“Tony,” Rhodey says, his voice level, “you know why we didn’t tell you.”

“Because you, uh, ‘know what’s best for me?’ Because I tried to kill myself twice? Because I’m suicidal? Because I failed and I’ve been living a nightmare for the past four months? Because you’re sick of dealing with my outbursts? Because--”

“Because you reacted exactly the way we knew you would,” Rhodey cuts him off wearily. “See this? You had a flashback to Titan, you’re worried the same thing’s gonna happen to your kid, you remembered Peter Pa--”

“Don’t say his name!” Tony snaps, but it’s more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything else, because already he can see the adoring brown eyes, hear the excited voice, hear the panicked gasping--

“And, Tony.” Rhodey puts a hand on Tony’s knee, which brings him back to the present moment, away from the kid. Now Rhodey’s voice is softer, there’s--Tony’s surprised. There are actual tears in his eyes. “How dare you even insinuate that we, that  _ any  _ of us, are  _ sick  _ of anything you’re going through. You have anxiety, and depression, and  _ major  _ PTSD. First of all, more than half the world has what you have. Maybe mental health was something people didn’t like ‘dealing with’ before the Snap, but not after. Never after. Everyone has these issues, everyone has PTSD.” One of the tears slips down onto Rhodey’s cheek, and the hand on Tony’s knee tightens. “You are  _ not alone. _ ”

“Yeah, I am.” Tony moves his knee so that Rhodey’s hand falls off. “Sure, everyone’s got issues, but they aren’t the reason we failed, Rhodey! They aren’t the reason! They just experienced it, we--we’re the reason we failed.  _ I’m  _ the reason we failed, I’m the motherf--”

“Not you,” Rhodey snaps, “not just you, Tony, shut up!” 

_ He hates me,  _ Tony thinks immediately.  _ He thinks I’m back to being the selfish, entitled brat who died in Afghanistan-- _

“Hey, hey, no, no, no--” Rhodey rubs a hand over his face. “No. No, I know what you’re thinking, Tony, and that’s my fault. I shouldn’t have snapped. But…” He shakes his head. “Do you think you’re my only friend?”

“No. Of course not.”  _ He lost someone. Someone who’s slipping my mind.  _ “But who--”

“We had a lot of friends in the Avengers. Whether we were on your side or Cap’s, we had friends. I’ve known Tasha for years...Clint’s a good one, too, but besides you, and besides them, I think my best friend was…” Rhodey takes a long, shaky breath that really sounds like he’s barely holding back a sob. “It was Sam Wilson.”

Oh. 

Oh, shit. 

There are a thousand things Tony could say right now., a million words in his head. But for some reason he can’t say any of them. So this time it’s Tony who puts a hand on Rhodey’s knee. 

Rhodey puts his hand over Tony’s, squeezes it tight. 

“I…” Tony struggles to find words. “I never…”

“If you’re about to feel guilty again, don’t.” Rhodey pulls back and sits next to Tony on the floor. “We never really interacted around you; after the Avengers broke up, we didn’t know what you’d think about it. It was something that sort of came around as a kind of camaraderie; we were both in the military, shit like that.”

“Makes sense.” 

For several minutes they just sit there. They don’t say anything. They just take a kind of lonely comfort in each other’s company. 

Tony finds himself looking at a Stephen Hawking novel. 

He’d never been a reader, not for fun. But he’d read Hawking novels like crazy. He’d driven Pepper crazy; he’d be up at two in the morning, the light on, scribbling notes about quantum mechanics. 

That hadn’t happened in years. 

“Rhodey…” 

Rhodey turns his head toward Tony. “Yeah?”

Tony lays back, relaxing his head against the wall. “When...when am I gonna enjoy things again?”

Rhodey sighs. “You having that problem, too?”

“Yeah.” Tony looks straight at the book. “Remember that? I haven’t read it in months.”

“I know the feeling.” Rhodey raises one knee, relaxes his wrist on it. “I used to marathon  _ Seinfeld  _ every day at two in the afternoon. Now I can’t stay interested past the opening scene. If that.”

Tony knows that’s depression. It’s what it does to him, to everyone; he’d gotten used to things not mattering to him, but it had never totally taken him over...until now. There’d always been something that kept him going. 

Now, what is there? Why is he still alive? 

He should be dead. 

_ I wouldn’t be alive unless...it was for a reason.  _

He’d said that to Pepper a million years ago. That’s why he’d become a superhero, why he’d become Iron Man. That had driven him for years, when everything else failed: that desire, that  _ need,  _ to do something about injustice, to use his skill for good. 

Now, what? Why the hell is he alive? 

He can’t think of a reason. 

“Oh, Rhodey.” It comes out in barely a whisper. 

“Yeah, Tony?”

Tony looks over at him, feelings almost desperate. “When’s it get better?”

Rhodey sighs. There’s pity there, again, but somehow it’s not insulting this time. 

“I don’t know, Tony.” Rhodey leans back, closes his eyes. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is based partly on my own issues with depression, on and off; I wasn't going to write anything Tony-related for a while, but then my depression came back, so this popped out. Somehow, writing Tony depressed is really, really cathartic; I can't really explain it.   
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
